Redski
New Member
What else to do on a wet Sunday? First of all and to be a bit pedantic: Your 'license' is free. You pay a registration fee. The difference? Registration is the process which ties together an identifiable boat with an identifiable owner. A fee is charged and all boats,powered and unpowered have to be registered. In exchange you get 'nothing' and as no contracted service is provided you pay no VAT! A License is a form of permission and the 'permission' in this case is connected to the safety requirements you MOTOR boaters have to meet before excersising your RIGHT of navigation. i.e. the BSS. Please note that unpowered craft do not, as yet , need a license! I said I was being pedantic but the principle is very much connnected with the statutory public right of navigation on the Thames. A principle I suspect you all agree is worth fighting for?
So what of Navigation Levels of Service? Whilst not contractual they were hammered out and agreed with a wide range of user groups and were religously measured and reported on. Failure to meet them all 100% was not particualrly unusual but the reports allowed a public debate as to where resources ought to go , whether or not there were enough resources or whether the published levels needed changing. A challenging but transparent process in which management and users were involved. The outcomes were often used to support a bid for better funding> Do they still exist? I don't know! 0.8 of an inch of rain in the past few hours so I suspect one of the targets (weir keeping within a range ) will be being measured right now!
So what of Navigation Levels of Service? Whilst not contractual they were hammered out and agreed with a wide range of user groups and were religously measured and reported on. Failure to meet them all 100% was not particualrly unusual but the reports allowed a public debate as to where resources ought to go , whether or not there were enough resources or whether the published levels needed changing. A challenging but transparent process in which management and users were involved. The outcomes were often used to support a bid for better funding> Do they still exist? I don't know! 0.8 of an inch of rain in the past few hours so I suspect one of the targets (weir keeping within a range ) will be being measured right now!